I grew up a Yankee fan, I favor Pitchers whenever possible, I am a stathead, and my dream job is to be a GM for an MLB franchise. In the summer, I go to MLB games and catch baseballs. In the winter, I write about what teams are doing to get better or worse. I try to be positive and unbiased in my writing, but that isn't always possible when evaluating teams truthfully.

Results tagged ‘ Josh Roenicke ’

I wasn’t exactly thrilled to go to this game, but in trying to get to 60 games this season, there are such games that I have to just suck up and go to anyway. Why did I not want to be at this game? This guy:

It was Josh Willinghammer bobblehead day, and I while I do like the bobblehead–despite the boring box–I knew a ton of other people would as well, and I was right. Here is the view in the bleachers to my right, right as I entered the stadium:

And here was the view in the bleachers to my left with the friend who joined me from my residence hall that day, Kyle:

I had told Kyle a couple of times of my baseball ventures and so he asked me if he could accompany me to a game whenever I was going to one next. It was like a week-and-a-half before the game, and the Twins were gone for a while, so this was the one we ended up going to. We had left our dorm at around 3:50, and got to the game at about 4:40, and by the time we got there, there was already a line at Gate 3 that went half-way to Gate 6. I won’t include a map, but if you want you can check it out and see what I mean. It would be a normal line size for Yankee Stadium, but for here it was massive.

It soon became clear that everyone was way more concentrated in the left field bleachers. Had I been smart and realized that the weather was relatively warmer, I might have gone up to the second deck and played for Josh Willingham, Adam Jones and players of their ilk to hit baseballs into the second deck. But sadly I didn’t think of it and instead just went over to the right-center field seats and got a ball from Josh Roenicke:

I had called out to Roenicke on a previous ball, but when he looked back at me, he thought the kid next to me had asked him for the ball. But then when I asked him for a ball when another rolled to the wall, he looked up and saw that I was all alone, so he tossed me the ball. I didn’t realize it until I went back and checked my stats, but that was my 100th baseball ever at Target Field, making Target Field only the second stadium I’ve accomplished that at. That was it for me for the Twins portion of BP, because as I said before, it was crowded. Target Field is an okay ballpark when there’s no one around. When it’s crowded, it shows its true ballhawking colors.

When Twins BP ended, I made my way to the Orioles dugout, but nothing was going on:

It was at the time that actual baseball-snagging action started to occur that I got a message from Sean saying that he had just parked and was headed to Gate 34. Since I was not ready to sacrifice snagging opportunities to go give him his ticket, I recruited Kyle to head out there and give him the ticket despite the fact that neither had met the other beforehand.

After Kyle left, I first tried to get a ball from the position players tossing by the dugout:

But all of them tossed their balls onto the field after they were done. I then tried to get a ball from the position players warming-up just past third base, but instead of getting a ball from them, one of the Orioles bullpen catchers, Ronnie Deck (unofficial assist to Avi Miller for the fact that I know his name), saw that the players weren’t tossing me a ball, so he tossed me a ball without me even asking for one:

(Notice the Orioles couple realizing I had gotten a ball and unintentionally photo-bombing me.) I gave this ball away to a kid as I was walking towards the left field foul pole.

In the time that it took Kyle to get out to right field, the position players warmed up completely. By the time Sean and Kyle were making their way back to me, I was almost to the foul pole in foul territory. So as I saw them cutting across the seats towards the dugout where Kyle had left me, I started waving towards them to draw their attention. They were behind me (read: away from the field), so I had to look back to wave to them. It was at this time I heard the crowd make some noise; like as if a ball was rolling on the warning track near the stands that a player might toss up. Right after I heard that, I felt a blow to both my left and right legs at about the knee area. While I was looking away from the field, an Orioles player–probably Manny Machado–had pulled a ball down the line and it managed to strike not one, but both of my legs on the fly. It actually didn’t hurt much at all right after the ball hit me. No, the most painful part of that whole incident was the fact that the ball bounced right off of me to the hands of the guy in front of me. However, it was because of this that I got my second ball of the day. Tommy Hunter had seen the whole thing go down, so when he was done throwing, he came over and signed a ball for me and my “troubles”:

As he gave me the ball and left, I said, “Thanks, Tommy. I appreciate it.” and he kind of smiled. It was the kind of smile that made me think I had gotten his name wrong. I was pretty sure it was Tommy Hunter, so I was confused by why he acted this way. I realized why when I read the writing on the ball. Here was the signature itself:

but here was what he wrote on the ball itself for me:

Hunter had gone to run poles, so by the time I had read the ball and understood it, he was already in center field, but when he made it back to the left field foul pole, I jokingly told him my reason for getting hit while giving him a hard time about putting what he did on the ball.

After that, I headed out to the seats in right field:

And when I looked to my right, I saw a couple of interesting things.

1. There was pretty much the whole Orioles roster in the outfield at one point:

Okay, so maybe that’s a bit of hyperbole, but that’s what, 15 people in the outfield that you can see in that picture alone?

2. The left field seats were absolutely packed because of the bobblehead day:

At most other stadiums that’s a decent-sized crowd, but because of the steepness and overhang in left field, I knew I wouldn’t have a chance at a ball in left field. This was particularly frustrating because it was J.J. Hardy’s group that was hitting, and he hit several baseballs to the spot where I usually play him at any ballpark. It was crowded, but who knows if I don’t have an extra couple of baseballs if I had been in left field for that group.

But with my legs making any movement very painful, I was stuck in right field. Sean and Kyle, who both knew how much of an annoyance it can be to follow me around when I’m running back and forth, seemed pretty content with just staying in right field, though:

They even had time to go get food and get back to find me still in the section that they had left me in. (This is usually not the case if you leave my side for over five minutes.)

Anyway, I wouldn’t get any other baseballs for the rest of batting practice itself, but at the very end of BP, I went down to the Orioles dugout and got their hitting coach, Jim Presley to toss me a ball as the baseballs were being transferred from the ball basket to the ball bag.

After that, I headed out to center field to try to get a ball from the groundscrew member who clears the batter’s eye of baseballs after batting practice, but I just barely missed him, getting there as he was headed off the batter’s eye:

The three of us alternated sitting behind the third base seating moat and the standing room in right field, but I couldn’t get another ball for the rest of the game.

Sean had brought his car to the game, so once we finally got out of the parking garage that Sean had parked in and got through the Minnesota traffic, Sean dropped Kyle and I off at our dorm on the St. Paul campus. Sean and I had just agreed the day prior that we were going to be taking a weekend trip to his home in Chicago so he could visit his mom on Mother’s Day and I could go to a couple of games at U.S. Cellular Field. So when he left us at the dorm just before midnight, it was knowing that we would be seeing each other just a few short hours later on our way to Chicago.

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Twitter Account
My Twitter account, where I keep you up-to-date on blog/baseball happenings. See below to look at some of my most recent tweets. tweets

Ballhawking Sites

Cook & Sons' Baseball Adventures
Although most ballhawking blogs are, Todd Cook’s narrative of his and his sons’ adventures going to ballparks is the closest thing there is to a father-son-baseball written reality show.

Hit Tracker
An amazing tool that was responsible for my success at Yankee Stadium in 2010. See Season end review (Nov, 1, 2010) if you want to see the difference @ Yankee Stadium.

My Game Balls
The ballhawking community’s mode of communication and competetion

My mygameballs.com account
Specifically *my* account on mygameballs.com which has much more detailed stats than I have time to write about

Plouffe's New Hairdo
One of my new Minnesota friends, Tony Voda’s ballhawking/Twins/music-in-the-offseason-but-sometimes-during-the-season-too blog.

Steel City Ballhawk
A blog written by elite ballhawk, Nick Pelescak, about all of the games he attends, which is a ton since he is a season ticket holder at PNC Park.

The Ballhawker
The ballhawking blog of a fellow New York ballhawk, Chris Hernandez.

Zack Hample (The Baseball Collector)
Now If you are reading this blog there is a .00009 % chance that you haven’t visited this blog, but as a service to the reason this blog exists I want to have Zack add that .00009% to his viewership. It is the least I can do.

MLBlogs I Recommend and Follow

Ballparks on a Budget
Ever want to go to a baseball game outside of your local team but don’t want to empty the bank? Alicia Barnhart’s your girl with Ballparks on a Budget. She should know how to spend wisely in going to games because, well, she’s been to them all. Just last

Dodger Blue World
Just a great blog written by dedicated Dodger super-fan Emma Amaya.

Minoring In Baseball
A blog written by the father of just a family who are all fans of the West Michigan Whitecaps who is just a great guy in general: Michael David.

MLB.com Blogs Central
As the title kind of suggests, this blog is pretty much the center of the MLBlogs unvierse. It apply sometimes goes by the moniker: “MLBlogosphere”

The Ballpark Guide
A MUST-read for any MiLB afficionados, or even many MLB fans. Malcolm MacMillan goes to different ballparks all over and details his visit on the blog and writes tips for anyone going to that ballpark on his website (which can be found on the blog’s homep

The Next White Sox GM
If you were a baseball mind growing up, you may have gotten a comment from an elder female family member (usually grandma) saying, “You should be the one to run the team with all the knowledge you’ve got about baseball.” Well, here’s a kid who might just

The Unbiased MLB Fan
Matt Huddleston doesn’t root for the teams; he roots for the players. I wish I could say more, but I suspect any other explanation of his blog would be a multi-centennial-word ordeal.

Three Up, Three Down
One would assume not getting into the MLB Fan Cave is a sad experience. (Well, at least I would; I’ve never been old enough to apply.) However, this group of fans turned that usually-sad experience and turned it into a great blog where there are just a sl

MLBlogs I Recommend

Observing Baseball Classics

"The Baseball" Book Review
In this entry I reviewed/summarized the entirety of the book “The Baseball: Stunts, Scandals, and Secrets Beneath the Stitches” written by Zack Hample.

10/19/10 ALCS: Yankee Stadium
Sure I had no clue how to write it, but this was my first ballhawking entry ever and my only of 2010, so it falls under the category “classic”

Ballhawk Charities 2012
Where I went over the four ballhawk charities I had heard of at the beginning of the season as a way of helping them out by getting the word out.

Case Study on Morality in Baseball
A research paper I did way back in the summer of 2010. I don’t necessarily agree with everything I wrote back then anymore, but it does add an interesting perspective to things especially in today’s steroid talk.

Collected Baseball Knick-knacks
Quite simply: pretty much everything baseball-related that I had collected and managed to keep ahold of as of November, 20, 2011.

Dissecting/Deconstructing Baseballs
I’ve taken apart several baseballs before, and it was fun, so I decided to make a video of me taking apart a baseball and adding tips for other people to do so too.

Favorite MLB Players
I did probably one of my funner videos on who my favorite players were from the present day, when I first started watching baseball, and my favorite player that I never saw play at all.

Houlihan Park Tour and Snagging Analysis
This is my high school, Fordham Prep,’s home field, which being the manager of the varsity team for three years, I spent proabably more games here than at any other baseball field. So when I returned to my high school for a day, I took a quick tour of the

Observing Baseball Trivia
See the description of the link two links above, but modify it slightly so it fits this entry’s title.

Pitching Aces in the Playoffs
My first ever “real” entry that I ever wrote back on the surplus of star pitchers in the 2010 playoffs. It was pretty good considering I knew nothing about blogging, or writing in general for that matter.

Pure Genius
This is just me explaining how the Phillies got three aces of pitchers; nothing fancy. But it was me showing my first flash of general manager mind to the world, so that’s why I like it.

Sabermetrics (the explanation)
This was me explaining some simple sabermetric statistics for the people of the world who have heard of the stats but never really knew what significance they had/have over the more common metrics. I take pride in this because it can potentially educate s

Survey of Adults Perception of Baseball
I surveyed a bunch of my teacher as to which baseball player was there favorite; both in and outside of New York. It’s a bit more complex than that, but the only way to understand is to read the entry.

Tour Target Field in the Snow
Target Field is in Minnesota, so it only felt fitting that I should take at least one day to tour it while it was buried in the snow. And that’s what this entry was: a video of me going around Target Field while it was snowing and there was a ton of snow

Weird Observing Baseball Facts and Records
I may yet do this every year…and it would then become its own link category–but for the meantime–there is only one set of Observing Baseball Facts and Records, so it definitely goes under “Observing Baseball Classics”.

Blast from the Baseball Past

8/24/08 Dodgers at Phillies: Citizens Bank Park
My second ever game to CBP that ended with Pedro Feliz hitting a three-run walk-off home run while my dad and I were in the car because we had to catch a flight to Detroit seven hours later that same day in New York.

Obsevers of Baseball

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